The recent restrictive resolutions of the overseers have called forth such comment in the newspapers of the day, and particularly in the college press, as to put in an unfair light the liberal policy of our university. It has suddenly become the fashion for many other colleges to wash their hands of Harvard's system and to put themselves on record as supporters to a greater or less extent of the conservative spirit. It is, of course, obvious that a blind liberal policy is more dangerous than a blind conservative policy, but that critic of the Harvard system who designates it as blindly liberal shows immediately his in competency as a judge.
It is, unfortunately, too trite that some men come to college who are unfit to stand alone, and who, therefore, would be palpably assisted by a code of school-boy rules; but it is a gross injustice to put more than a very small minority of college men in this class. The average collegian, though he may fall far short of his responsibility, is yet a better man for having had it imposed upon him, and college is quite late enough to learn of this responsibility. The student with a foundation of manliness cannot, except unjustly, be made to suffer for the student who if he is maintained now by an artifice system of props, will nevertheless fall as soon as he leaves colleges and is brought in contact with the world. Student life is supposed to be a preparation for the world, not a shield from it, and there can be no better element in this preparation than a feeling of individual responsibility.
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